


cherry boys

by Togaki



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Documentarian Ginjima, Ginjima’s POV, I was gently nudged into writing this, Inarizaki Volleyball Club - Freeform, M/M, Narrator Akagi, began as a crackfic, lots of blushing from everybody (except Suna), rip to AkaGin’s 2 (now 3) search results, this is really light on the documentary stuff bc I suck at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29403825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Togaki/pseuds/Togaki
Summary: When a pretty girl asks you to do something, you don’t question it. You just do it.--Or:: Akagi and Ginjima go undercover as National Geographic documentarians and come out the other side a little dumber but a lot in love.
Relationships: Akagi Michinari/Ginjima Hitoshi, Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 20
Kudos: 34





	cherry boys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spiritscript](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritscript/gifts).



> Hi, Nae. This wasn’t supposed to be AkaGin, but it became AkaGin because I said so. Suffer. (Or enjoy. Your choice.)

“No, no, I really can’t!” 

Ginjima is terrible at saying no. Especially when a cute girl asks him. Especially when a cute, _older_ girl asks him. Especially when said cute, older girl is his current crush as well as president of the cinema club. 

She persists. Clapping her hands together, she says, “ _Please_ , Hitoshi-kun! I can’t count on anyone else!”

They’re standing in the middle of the second year hallway, and while Ginjima would normally run to the window and shout “ _hallelujah_ ” and do a little tap-dance to some Irish jig he’s only ever seen performed once at the culture center when he was five, he can’t, because that’s embarrassing. And also, Atsumu’s snickering at him from the doorway. 

Ginjima should have no problem, no problem whatsoever accepting this proposal from, again, this very very cute girl; however, there remains one itty bitty problem. 

He stares at the film camera. It’s big, it’s bulky, and screams that it’s from the 1970s. It’s retro in the sense that it’s old and only old, and there’s nothing “vintage” about it, other than the fact that the only kind of footage it takes is likely the kind some artists would call a “tasteful interpretation.” 

In short, it’s a piece of crap. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do with this? 

But his crush pleads, “ _Please, Hitoshi-kun?_ ” one more sweet-sighing, bell-lulling, dove-releasing time, and Ginjima can’t help himself. 

His cheeks burn. 

_Well,_ he thinks looking down at this hunk of junk before gulping at the sight of her pretty batting lashes, _he can always figure it out later._

  
  


“Hey, Gin. Whatcha got there?” Akagi asks in the storage room. 

Why the storage room? Because Ginjima can’t stand Atsumu’s snark nor his cow-chortling laughter echoing across the massive gym. 

_A cherry_ , he had called him. _A fucking cherry_ , Atsumu called Ginjima as he blushed after his crush walked away and Ginjima was left with a film camera from the 1960s that he neither knew how to use nor knew how to look up. 

“The cinema club wants to take footage of the volleyball team,” Ginjima says, though it doesn’t answer Akagi’s question. 

“Well, why do _you_ have a camera then?”

“Because,” Ginjima says, and he turns bright red again because he, too, does not know the answer, and when a pretty girl asks you to do something, you ask not. 

_A cherry!_ _A cherry!_ goes Atsumu’s annoying voice once again. 

He wants to strangle something. Anything.

It’s only when Akagi says “woah there” that he realizes he was exactly [one] homicidal thought close to throttling the life out of the camera’s neck. 

_No, no, that’s no good_ , Ginjima thinks. Crush-chan won’t be happy if Ginjima returns her camera to her in pieces. That won’t reflect well on his boyfrien— _ahem_ , reliable classmate material—at all. 

Akagi takes the camera from Ginjima’s hold and he tilts it upward like he’s looking through a telescope. “You know, I think my grandpa has one of these.”

“Yeah?” Ginjima’s heart lifts. 

“Yeah,” Akagi grins, and there’s a blush of rose on his cheeks. 

Ginjima blinks. Dumbly.

Could that? _No, that couldn’t be_ —

“Want me to ask him?” Akagi asks, waiting, expecting. And as soon as it was there, it’s gone.

Ginjima’s mind is still thinking about Akagi’s cheeks, the slight red, the beckoned tilt in his head as he looks down, the quirk in his lips as he grins again, now, and Ginjima wrestles with everything he can to shake it off. 

And Ginjima, of course, is terrible at saying no. 

  
  


“I don’t—”

“Hush.” 

“But—”

“Trust me, okay?”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Ginjima says, blowing hot air at his bangs.

Akagi begs to differ. Akagi thinks this is a fantastic idea. 

Akagi has no idea that Ginjima thinks this is the dumbest thing in the world, yet he’s here anyway. 

They’re wearing zoo hats—those lifeless round ones that seem more effective flopping in the wind than actually staying on your head—and Akagi is crouched down on the ground, peering around the corner to spy on the rest of the team with Ginjima’s film camera that was stolen from the 1950s, and he whispers “hush hush, come closer.” 

Ginjima grimaces but listens. He crouches down as well, though not nearly as low as the libero, and the two stick their heads around the corner together, observing.

Akagi pans the camera and narrates: “[And here, as we can see, is a team, born from the dirt and matured into fame, as they horde together like a bunch of pigs from Kita’s pen. The pack leader is nowhere to be found, and there are but a few members of this tribe here, having been left to a reprieve for themselves. What might they do when left to their own devic— _Ooh! Got’em!_ And there goes one of the mightiest of the pack! Atsumu battling for dominance as Osamu slaps the shit out of him! One might think the ways of this hoard is curious, perhaps even unusual, but this is a common practice of theirs. Especially regarding food. Always food.]”

Akagi is literally jittering from his spot as he narrates, capturing the ensuing chaos unfolding between Atsumu and Osamu. 

Ginjima’s pretty sure this isn’t what his crush had in mind when she asked him to film the volleyball club for her. But Akagi took one look at Ginjima’s camera, thought back to when both Atsumu and Osamu had wronged the libero by plopping their elbows on Akagi’s shoulders like the tall idiots they are, and he thought “ _revenge.”_

Meanwhile, Ginjima thinks, _What on earth did I get myself into?_

Ginjima sits down, settling back against the wall as he sighs, watching as Akagi rattles off like a nature documentary plucked from the Discovery Channel.

To be frank, he’s not sure what Akagi’s schtick is. He’s a third year, and he’s nice for the most part—likes to show off Internet dances when he learns them and somehow always manages to show up with an ice pop just as Ginjima thinks, _damn, it’s hot today_ —but outside of Ginjima’s second-year circle, he doesn’t hang out with the third years much. Even though, sometimes, when he’s sure no one else is looking, Ginjima catches Akagi’s eyes staring at him, softly, and then he can’t help but tear his gaze away. 

But still, _Akagi has a great voice_ , Ginjima thinks, as the boy narrates the part where Kita comes back and starts prying a feral Osamu off of Atsumu.

And when Kita notices the two of them filming secretly and silently reprimands them, too, only for Akagi to quickly and fail to defend them both, Ginjima thinks, _Akagi is nice_. 

  
  


NARRATOR’S VOICE (Akagi): 

Cut 1, Scene 1. “And if you look here, you can spot the tell-tale signs of a fledgling freshman beaten into submission by the pointed glare of his superior, the “ _dominant!”_ (said like John Mulaney) Kita Shinsuke!” 

[This scene was cut and cannot be used, at the askance of the “ _dominant_!” Kita Shinsuke.]

Cut 5, Scene 12. “Marsupials, the lot of them. They crawl everywhere, invade your desk, and declare that “what’s yours is mine, but mine’s not yours” because darwinism, duh. We, as a humankind, need to evolve from these disgusting paradigms.”

[“Akagi-san… you can’t just say that about your underclassman.” “ _But_ —” This scene was cut.]

Cut 18, Scene 20. “ _Hoo, hoo, hoo,_ what do we have here? A feline vixen smitten with her suitor, perhaps a mating ritual. One offers a pudding cup. Ah, yes, showing they can provide a food source. The iconic rose tinge, the blotchy red streaks, the… * _huge dead pause_ * oh my, this is quite gruesome.”

“Oh damn, that’s disgusting.” (Ginjima)

“ _Hey_!” (Osamu)

“ _Shit, run!_ ” (Akagi)

[This scene was cut because Miya Osamu did not appreciate having his splotchy blushes being filmed. Suna Rintarou can be heard laughing in the rolling audio clips as Osamu whines “ _Rin_.”]

  
  


“Akagi-san,” Ginjima says, slowly, as they’re packing up for the day. It’s been two weeks since they started this little stint. 

“Hmm?” The boy has wide doe-eyes as he looks at Ginjima, and it makes Ginjima gulp. 

He thinks about the video clips, about Akagi’s voice, and the faint blush that always seems to stutter on his own expression but not once on Akagi’s since that first day in the storage room. And then he sees Akagi tilt his head, smiling as he rests both hands on his hips, and Ginjima says, 

“Nevermind.”

  
  


Ginjima hates this. What did God do to him? 

Granted, amidst all the films they took of Inarizaki, there are some good parts. However, it’s all sandwiched thickly between blurred candids, random audio, and videos that would likely damage the boys’ volleyball club’s reputation before ever digging that reputation out of rock bottom if they _did_ release it. Because of that, Ginjima has to sift through all the video, keeping the ones that seem decent (and hopefully without Akagi’s vivid National Geographic narration) and deleting the hodgepodge of junk that never should have seen the light of day to begin with.

He bangs his head on his desk, moaning. 

He’s been staring at footage of Suna and Osamu’s stupid mating dance all afternoon, and he can’t stand it anymore. Who even wants to watch this? Not him, not Crush-chan.

And thinking about Crush-chan has him groaning all over again because _stupid, stupid Ginjima_. 

She’d gone up to him earlier that school day to ask him about the filming and when he said he could swing by her house over the weekend to drop it off, she said, “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m going out on a trip this weekend with my girlfriend. It’s our anniversary. But you know what? I’ll get it from you on Monday, ‘kay?”

 _A cherry! A cherry!_ Atsumu had laughed before Ginjima _actually_ socked him in the gut this time. 

Suna applauded him. Osamu gave him the “ya good boy” nod. Akagi was buzzing, proud as he ruffled Ginjima’s hair all the while Atsumu just shouted and called them all “ _traitors_!”

So there came his first heartbreak, at sixteen years old, after having filmed over fifty hours of worthless footage for a favor that seems so stupid now and stupid then, never even breaching the boundary between “reliable classmate” and “friend.” 

And still he’s stuck watching Suna and Osamu, Osamu’s ugly red blotches blooming on his face as Suna picks a cobweb—not even a _leaf_ or a _petal_ or _something shoujo_ , but a fucking _cobweb_ —from Osamu’s hair, and that’s when Ginjima thinks to himself, 

_That’s really nice._

He doesn’t delete the footage. 

  
  


Monday comes and the footage goes, as does the camera relic from the 1940s, and Ginjima has never been happier to part with something, even if that something is the last thing that lingers from his unrequited crush. 

He goes to class and he goes to practice and he goes through his rounds, and just as his mind starts to helplessly wander and he soberly thinks, _Ah, this really sucks_ , Akagi pops up from behind him, scaring all of Ginjima’s living cherries right out of him and then maybe leaving some, because Akagi says, “You’re bright red.”

Ginjima touches his cheeks, and he wishes someone had a mirror, or a camera, or something, so that he could check, but it’s evident from the buzz in his ears and the heat against his fingers that,

“Huh. You’re right.”

At this point, seeing Suna and Osamu flirt with each other hurts less because of Ginjima’s actual dating life—or lack thereof—and more because neither of them will actually do anything. 

Osamu skirts and blurts, Suna laughs, and then Osamu’s clown face absolutely cannot be contained. 

And as they’re all in the gym, Ginjima, alone and off to the side, whispers underneath his breath as he watches Suna and Osamu, “[And here the canary chirps, charmed by her companion’s alluring song. What will he do next to sway her to him entirely? Or will she reject his advances and move on to find a new suitor? For now, we may only observe.]”

Atsumu stares at him. “What the fuck.”

Ginjima nods sagely. 

What the fuck indeed.

  
  


Ginjima realizes he never deleted the footage of Suna and Osamu. 

Oh fuck. 

  
  


Akagi nervously asks Ginjima if Ginjima has looked through all of the footage yet, and when Ginjima reports a half-truthful, half-lie, “Yes?” Akagi’s shoulders slump slowly and his smile downturns a little. 

(Ginjima gave up halfway. Ginjima needs to get that fucking footage back.)

Akagi says, “thanks,” and walks away. 

Ginjima feels conflicted.

This is his second fuck.

  
  


~~Crush-chan~~ Akari-chan asks Ginjima if he’s aware of all the footage he gave her. He answers truthfully this time.

“No, no, I haven’t,” he says, almost guiltily. 

And when she twirls a piece of her hair unassuredly and stares anywhere but at Ginjima’s pleading expression, Ginjima breaks. 

“Please, could you tell me?”

  
  


She doesn’t tell him. Rather, she gives back all of the footage minus the actual creditable ones that they’ll be using for the athletic banquet at the end of the month. (He realizes too late that he never actually asked her what the footage was supposed to be for, and he’s now made a fool of himself three, four, perhaps five—and still counting—times.)

And when he clicks on the clip Akari-chan pointed out to him, his heart sinks.   
  


Ginjima catches Akagi during passing time in the hallway between Class 2-2 and Class 2-3. 

“Were you never going to tell me?” Ginjima says, eyes stinging. They haven’t stopped stinging since last night when he watched the video.

Akagi’s eyes widen. “What?” 

“That you like me!” Ginjima shouts, and then suddenly the entire school’s population is staring at them. 

In any other situation, he’s sure that Atsumu would be in their classroom, whistling and hooting _cherry_! like some kind of dense automaton, but at this moment, he honestly doesn’t care. 

Because if Ginjima was a cherry, then Akagi was a lychee peeled back, because beneath those beautiful rosy cheeks is a coward who’s gone pale. 

“Wait, I thought you didn’t see the video!”

“I didn’t, but now I have, and I want to know why you didn’t tell me.”

Akagi tries to weasel his way out of it—the little shit. “Well, technically I _did_ tell you through the video but—”

“And you didn’t think you should tell me _in person_?” Ginjima says, wanting desperately to cry but refusing. He can’t help himself; he’s always been an emotional person. But this also means that he sinks so thoroughly, so wholly into any emotion, that it splinters deeply into him. And it unearths him. 

So when his unrequited crush with Akari-chan failed, it came as a surprise that the fallout had swept by so fast. 

_Not surprising,_ Ginjima then thinks, as he looks at Akagi, who continues to stand passively in front of him. And he _wants,_ _wants_ him to say something. Anything.

“If you want something, tell it to me yourself, coward,” Ginjima says, huffing. He crosses his arms, staring unblinking through eyes that well up, and he prays, _Good lord, don’t let me cry right now. I’m a terrible crier._

But then Akagi, guilty, just says, “Sorry,” and Ginjima can’t help the sink in his gut that pulls him down.

The bell rings, and the crowd and Akagi leave. And lamentably, Atsumu doesn’t once say anything to Ginjima when he returns, provoking or not. He pats Ginjima on the back, and Ginjima tries to pretend like he’s not blinking furiously, tears dripping on his notebook. 

  
  


“Suna.”

“Cherry boy, good to see you,” Suna says, but there’s little bite to the words. He probably saw everything from his classroom anyway. 

Ginjima asks, “What do you think of Osamu?”

“Osamu?” Suna says, eyes narrowing. “He’s a friend, why?”

“Is he _just_ a friend?”

Suna’s expression is unreadable. “Yeah. Why?”

Ginjima shoves a USB into Suna’s palm. It’s all the footage he never deleted. At the time, he figured he was being sentimental, but maybe it’s because he also recognized that unless there was someone to give push, these two would never get anywhere. 

“Watch this and then tell me—no, _him_ —if you still feel the same way.”

“Wait, Gin—”

“Man up, Suna!” he says, then stalks away.

 _What the fuck does that even mean,_ Ginjima thinks even though he’s the one who said it. 

It means not being a coward, he thinks. It means being brave, perhaps. 

It means not hiding behind someone else’s feelings in order to deflect your own.

  
  


“Gin!”

_Fuck._

Ginjima walks faster. It’s a hallucination. Nope. No way. Uh-uh. 

But sadly, that hallucination is fast-throttling, looks like he’s sprinting, and Ginjima gives into his desperate urge to run. 

But just as he takes his first speedy step, Akagi tackles him to the ground in front of the courtyard. 

He groans, his bookbag and sports duffel digging into his back. 

Then he looks up at Akagi’s earnest gaze and Ginjima feels like shrinking. 

He knows. He knows he should talk to Akagi. He knows he should apologize for making a scene in front of the entire school. He knows he should be brave and strong and all of those ideal qualities, but Ginjima’s scared. 

Because what if this time, there is no coming back from another heartbreak? 

Akagi’s voice is gentle—gentler than he’s ever heard it before. “Hey, you can look at me, you know?”

Ginjima doesn’t realize he’s been shutting his eyes, clamped tight in hopes that maybe if he opened them again, this situation would disappear. 

Slowly, he opens them. He blinks up at Akagi, all beautiful and sweaty and blinding Akagi. 

Akagi smiles awkwardly. “You can say something, too, you know? You could shout at me to get off, if you want.”

Ginjima thinks for a second, thinks about the Akagi’s weight straddling his hips and the uncomfortable ridges of his bookbag needling away at his back, and he says, “I guess… you’re a little heavy.”

Surprised, Akagi blinks, and then he laughs. It’s so enchanting, the fact that Ginjima has never heard Akagi actually _laugh_ before—he’s heard him snort, or chuckle, or giggle, but never a head thrown back and a chest-heavy _laugh_ —and Ginjima feels his cheeks warm all over again, just like that first day, that first time. 

“Jesus,” Akagi says, air in his voice and light in his eyes, “the first thing you say to me all week, and it’s _that_? I can’t even be offended.”

“You’re not mad at me?” Ginjima asks, heart flipping.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

Because as much as Ginjima likes to pretend he’s tough and reliable, he’s actually much more frail than he’d care to admit. 

And unfairly, he had let Akagi bear the brunt of it. 

Ginjima’s voice is quiet, small, as he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Because truly, he just wants to know why Akagi wouldn’t tell him himself rather than let Ginjima find out through something Akagi would never even have control over. 

Is love really something you leave up to chance?

At that, Akagi just smiles and his chest lifts with a deep breath. He sits up on his knees, and Ginjima follows, pushing himself off the ground. 

“I thought it’d be funny, I guess. Not funny like I didn’t mean it, cause I did, but I thought, ‘Hey, this could be a really romantic gesture, right? Bet he’ll get a real kick out of it!’” he chuckles, then falters. Akagi looks bittersweet, then, as he looks down. “Ah, sorry. I guess it didn’t turn out like that, huh? I guess I just wasn’t expecting you to… well.”

“But what if I _didn’t_ see it?” Ginjima says, leaning forward. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”

“Maybe?” Akagi says. And then he looks nervous. Like a squirrel. How cute. “Eventually?” He scratches his head. “Like, at graduation?” he says, his voice pitching high at the end, a frantic bite.

Ginjima shouts. “ _Graduation_?”

“ _Eep!”_

Akagi freezes. Ginjima stares. What the fuck kind of sound was _that_?

Then, against all odds, Ginjima snorts. He starts giggling, almost uncanny. This is all so ridiculous.

Akagi looks at Ginjima dumbfounded as Ginjima rakes a hand through his hair. 

Then Ginjima pauses, looks at Akagi as the boy begins to smile tepidly along with him, and he can’t help it—Osamu’s not the only one with a terrible blushing habit. 

And so Ginjima thinks to himself, _He’s weird, yeah, but I kind of like that brand of weird, I guess._

After all, he put up with Akagi’s National Geographic narration for two weeks. And he loved it, actually. Missed it, actually. As weird as he is. 

So it’s when Akagi tests the waters to check if he’s in the clear with Ginjima and says— “[This mammalian may be a little on the dumber side—]”

Cue a Ginjima snort. 

[—okay, _is_ a little dumb. And he’s sorry. For going about the courting all wrong. But he chooses his partner for life. And he’s risking his own ego once more by saying, properly this time, ‘Would this beautiful creature want to try its hand at it with me? Life?’]”

—that Ginjima’s eyes grow a little smaller because he smiles a beautiful, wide, unwitholding smile, and he says, “This mammal would be _honored_ to accept this strange-as-fuck proposal. But _please_ ,” he says, almost aghast as he looks into Akagi’s eyes, “never do this again.”

To which, laugh erupting and cheeks warming, Akagi throws his arms around Ginjima, hugs him as they tumble back to the ground, and says, “ _Haha, no guarantees_!”

 _Ah_. That may be a problem. Slightly a problem. Not a problem. 

_Never a problem_ , Ginjima thinks as Akagi chokes him a little from how tight he hugs. 

Because when a cute boy, who you may or may not have been falling for this entire time unbeknownst, asks you to do something, you don’t think. You just say, 

“Yeah.”

  
  
  


Bonus: 

“Oh yeah, what happened to all that footage with my narration?” Akagi asks, head buried in Ginjima’s chest. They’re still laying on the ground of the courtyard, and have been for the last forty-five minutes because Akagi refuses to let Ginjima up. 

Ginjima stalls, tries to remember what he did with them after Akari-chan gave it all back, and then freezes. 

He pales. 

“Oh shit.”

  
  


“Why the _flying fuck_ am _I_ the feline vixen?” Osamu asks, snuggled up against Suna, pouting as they watch Akagi’s fucking Discovery Channel narration play back.

Suna pecks him on the forehead, content. He should thank Ginjima later. 

He hums. “Who knows?”

**Author's Note:**

> “Dude, why are Akari’s and Akagi’s names so similar?” you ask. “Well, good question,” I say. “Because Ginjima is fucking blind, that’s why.”
> 
> Thank you Regan for hyping me in my docs.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/togaki_tana)  
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/togaki-kun)


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